


Non-Newtonian Fabrics and Their Uses

by TinyGayAutisticBae



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angela basically sighs all the time, Canon Autistic Character, F/F, Rambling about Autism, Satya is a struggling autistic bean, Sombra is confused about everything, fluff?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-10-25 19:41:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10771104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinyGayAutisticBae/pseuds/TinyGayAutisticBae
Summary: Satya is on a mission for all sorts of strange objects that frankly belong to an RPG questline. Sombra finds herself frustrated when she can't find her favourite person to watch (read: spy on), and gets sucked into the rabbit hole of non-Newtonian fabrics, Ferroleather, bubble plinths and more. Has she been hacked? She's never felt like this before.Currently a one-shot. Planning more chapters. We'll see.





	1. Chapter 1

Satya Vaswani only wanted one thing and she was going to make it happen. The engineering bay regulars, Mei-Ling Zhou and Torbjörn were, frankly, astounded and a little worried when they found Satya tinkering on one of the workstations usually frequented by the likes of Pharah or Reinhardt. She was almost aggressively attacking a hand made sentry turret, so far from her pristine creations of hard light normalcy. Torbjörn refused to interact with the woman, continuing work on his development of a new turret combination which could perhaps shoot rockets, citing that they never saw eye to eye ("an' that's not a height joke!"). Mei, on the other hand, hesitantly approached the distressed woman.

 

"Hiya, Satya. What are you working on? I don't see you here often."

 

The Indian's voice was muffled by her hands covering her face. "I was working on a failure."

 

Mei frowned. "Noise dampening sentry?" she read upside down from a specification note. She looked at the blueprint for a few moments. "Some of this circuitry is like Snowball!"

 

Satya looked up dismally. "It is merely a failed pet project. Ignore it."

 

"No, no," Mei said excitedly. "This should almost work! I had the same problem coding Snowball's base emotional array! Just to get the AI interacting right you need this wiring to connect here and here via an XOR gate; the wiring for the input needs a slight tweaking here and..." she went on for a while, making notes on a scrap of paper. Eventually she stepped back and exclaimed, "I think this should work now! I usually get Torbjörn to check over my work, it gets so hard to find the errors after a while."

 

During Mei's explosion of enthusiasm, Satya had taken more interest and eventually got to working on the suggested changes. "Mei-Ling, wait here please," she said softly, hesitantly. Mei hovered around behind her until she was finished. She turned on the switch and found the blue aura of the device bubbling around her.

 

Better yet, Mei was shouting something enthusiastically and waving her arms. Satya couldn't hear a thing.

 

It was bliss.

 

She switched it off and stood up. She regarded Mei for a while. Then:

 

"Thank you." Ever so gently, she gave Mei a small brief hug. Mei smiled.

 

"I'm glad I could help. It looks really cool! Let me know if you need help with anything else. If you don't mind my asking... Why did you make it?"

 

Satya said nothing for a while, nodding vaguely. "The same reason you made Snowball, I suspect. To survive."

 

She turned and strode out of the engineering bay, leaving a bewildered Mei to ponder just how extra that woman could be when she wanted to avoid answering a question.

 

* * *

 

It was not often that someone wanted to find Satya Vaswani and couldn't. She had set routines she always followed and the precision could almost be used to set a clock. However the curious Latina hacker who habitually watched the ex Vishkar employee couldn't help but feel a little unsettled at the lack of... well... anything. Sombra had almost the entire facility at her disposal (something she "conveniently" forgot to tell Talon at regular intervals) and yet she still couldn't find her quarry. 

 

This seemed like it would require a more personal touch.

 

Sombra didn't understand her total fascination with Ms Vaswani, only that it was important to her that she tracked her whereabouts. Indeed, the same level of focus she usually only devoted to the likes of Katya Volskaya was being provided to the Indian woman. She thought a little about this as she selected a dormant translocator somewhere in the pipework of the Gibraltar base and reactivated it. A simple jump and the sensation of nausea that accompanied; and a brief crawl to WP-GB-608 - the primary maintenance shaft of Gibraltar Watchpoint.

 

It was almost laughable really, she thought, how the Watchpoint hadn't yet thought to install infra red sensors or perhaps some kind of sensors to detect the unseen. Then again, why would they expect it? Only Talon knew about that particular vulnerability, and that was all down to Widowmaker and her darned Infra-Sight nonsense.

 

Activating her invisibility ability, she made her way quickly to Satya's room. Her first priority was planting an audio feed bug. It was risky, but unlikely anything would pick it up. Besides, it was infinitely preferable that she could hear conversations rather than just see grainy images. A purple glow and the door opened willingly under her hands. After all, breaking and entering was only a crime if you broke in. When the doors opened for you, that was different.

 

Satya wasn't in. Sombra knew this, but still she half expected the Indian woman to be waiting for her with that classically unimpressed expression on her face. But she wasn't. Of course she wasn't. That was why she was here. The bug itself was easy to install, how could it be hard when your body is literally hard-wired into the internet? With that done, she decided to poke around and see if she could find out where Satya had gone. 

 

The room was as pristine as ever, but she spotted something in the area the security cameras didn't cover - the back area of her room. The wardrobe doors were wide open and uncharacteristically messy. Sombra snuck closer. A list caught her eye, atop the recently published magazine slash encyclopaedic book New Middle Eastern Architecture. It was written in Sanskrit.

 

She switched on her translation software to decode just what Satya had written. It detailed changes to... a cupboard? Installation of turrets? A heap of bubbles? A container of legumes? At this point, Sombra was more confused than she was willing to admit.

 

Her onboard chip checked the results and changed the meaning. She was altering her wardrobe... making a sensory room. Of course! Satya was autistic, it said so in her files. One of the items was highlighted and a note in English scribed below. 

 

Meet contact Bolton in agreed location 09:35

 

Satya wasn't in. Sombra knew this. Now she knew why too. She was trying to get a location on an item for her project, a rather difficult to find item. The seller was evidently being discreet for a reason, one which Sombra thought she might know. One doesn't stumble across non-Newtonian fabrics just anywhere.

 

And what kind of hacker would she be if she didn't have a finger in every pie? The only seller of "bespoke bolts" on the whole damn continent was Antonio Guadalupe. A greasy man with a slick moustache, he tried to pull the non-Newtonian fabric over everyone's eyes. Sombra chuckled quietly at her own joke.

 

She dropped a message to Guadalupe. "Hola amigo. Remember our deal? Your 9:35. Give them whatever they want. My rates. If I hear anything suspicious, dig your own grave." Even as she typed she had a strange confusion as to why she was doing this. Maybe her cybernetics were defective? A wire crossing? Sombra is a look-after-numero-uno girl, not a look-after-waifs-and-strays girl. Could her cybernetics be hacked? That was a thought. The most notorious hacker being cybernetically hacked. Was that even possible? She decided to investigate that as soon as she could. Find a reputable doctor. But for now... a quick data mining session on Volskaya's beloved primary research and development server. Yes, that would do nicely. 

 

* * *

 

Satya's day was taking increasingly erratic turns. First her contact is five minutes late to the meeting point. Then he insists on seeing cash before allowing her to examine or even see a scrap of his wares. Then when he does show her, it is in brief flashes and barely enough to get an idea of the colouration.

 

"I don't care who you think you are," Satya eventually says, "nor how incredible your products are. If I cannot see them, I will not buy them."

 

Her contact - Antonio Guadalupe aka "Bolton" - smiled with half open eyes. His voice was silky smooth, all soft words with harsh malice underneath. "You have no idea what it took to get these samples here. I want half up front and you can look all you like. If you prove you're not wasting my time, I won't waste yours further."

 

"I could leave," Satya said plainly.

 

Antonio's eyes widened with something that was almost malicious. "Ah, but you won't. Ferroleather, non-Newtonian fabrics, they are hard to come by. Bolton knows this. Bolton smuggled them from the factory himself. I sell them at a fraction of the cost to the conscientious consumer. The consumer who likes to keep to themselves, no? The consumer who has something to hide? Something they don't want the world to know?"

 

Satya stiffened. "I keep to myself because I can. Shadows are not my preference, but sometimes standards must be lowered for a better future."

 

"Yadda schmadda. You want these fabrics and I know it. So pay up and we will talk."

 

"You are not worthy of the ground you stand upon. I will see those fabrics or I will walk."

 

Bolton looked almost disappointed. Almost. "Have a safe journey. I will not move on my offer."

 

Satya felt deeply disappointed with the negotiations that had occurred, but she was a woman of her word. Of course she was. She left.

 

Antonio sifted through his emails and notifications, seeing one of top priority from that damned hacking Brazilian. Or was it Mexican? The story changes depending on who you asked. He was going to be in hot water if he didn't reconcile this deal quick.

 

"Wait!" he called to Satya's retreating back. "I will halve my price! Quarter it!" She stilled.

 

"My maximum is one fifty," she said nonchalantly, knowing full well he would refute it and the true haggle would begin.

 

"Of course, of course, anything for a friend of a friend of Bolton's!" Satya was surprised. In fact, her brain produced the sentence "what the fuck?" before stifling itself to talk business. He quickly showed her the fabrics. It was a good quality and she instantly paid up. Beads of sweat tracked rivulets down Antonio's back. His losses on this deal would almost ruin him. He was already calculating where to save and where to scrimp. He fetched the fabric quickly from a store hole he had put it into prior to their meeting. 

 

He smiled through gritted teeth as Satya left with a box of strangely oozing cloth and far more money than she had expected.


	2. The Bubble Plinth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Satya's new target is a relaxing decoration... that is, if she can get it to work. Sombra thinks she can solve that problem.

Satya began development on one of the products she wanted to have; the so-translated "bubble plinth" that Sombra had read about not so long ago. The hard light manipulation was easy on a larger scale but at these sizes it became more complex. Finicky parts, significantly smaller tolerances and a manipulation device which did not cooperate with these tolerances particularly well; all these added up to an unanticipated headache. If Satya hated one thing over anything else, it was something unanticipated. In the end she elected to create the parts from hard light and assemble them afterward.

The primary stand was complete - it had come together exactly as Satya intended using the photon projector. It was planned to be a column through which bubbles would rise. A simple premise and yet so complex to get forming the way she wanted it to. First the bubbles were too big and then too small, then they made too much noise, then it was practically explosive and now they just didn't appear at all. She leant back, exasperated, on the cushion she had made from Bolton's fabric and stroked it absently. She was due for a meeting in five minutes, a briefing on a mission in Egypt. It seemed her problem would have to wait.

She stood up, dusting imaginary dirt from her clothes and straightening up. As she closed the door, a purple shimmer revealed Sombra, who lazily waved to the security cameras (which, by the way, were running a loop of Symmetra's room from when she left). She strode into the room and looked down on what Satya had been working on.

Quite honestly and rather unusually, it was a complete and utter mess. A long piece of pipe was labelled with strange things like "X14-6" which was crossed out and replaced and crossed out and replaced with three other terms until Satya apparently settled for "L90-1". Stacks of piping were heaped like some strange modern art installation. Little piles of nuts and bolts which seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with the project at hand were scattered here and there.

The main event was a large conglomeration of piping which connected to a long column. This was the bubble plinth. Apparently it wasn't working very well. Satya had written a dimension for practically everything and ticked them as they fitted the target range. Now that she looked at it more carefully, sitting down where Satya had done only a few minutes ago, it all became orderly and logical. The parts that were working as intended had been assembled into the piping she looked at at first, now resting in her lap. Those that weren't were heaped into those piles she had seen before.

She looked at the system that would make the bubbles themselves. It was on the biggest pile, marked "B10-15". Unfortunately this didn't seem to work at all. Sombra pulled up a schematic for a similar product she had "borrowed" from an interior design company who were selling the thing for an eye watering sum. She moved the pieces around for a while, like one big puzzle she was trying to solve. Her cybernetics were monitoring the outside corridor and the meeting room in case she was interrupted, but all was quiet for now.

The nozzles that delivered the bubbles had a couple of lines of internal code which she glanced at. Instantly she regretted it. For all of Satya's knowledge about damn near everything, clearly coding was not one of her skills. The fact of the matter was it was just awful. She erased all of it and started again, carefully noting the parameters that were written on the piece of paper nearby. When she had it looking better, she copied the information onto the rest of the nozzles and connected them into the system to watch how they formed.

They were almost right. The patterns were irregular, which was something Satya had stated was going to be one of the settings. She modified the code slightly, created a few other patterns and even an UI so that Satya could change them as she wished, and even create some more. She glanced at the camera monitors. The meeting seemed to be wrapping up. Time to skedaddle. She returned everything to as close as she could to where it was before.

Her cybernetics warned her of someone entering the key to come into Symmetra's room. She activated her stealth and quickly hid in the corner of the room. Satya came in, trailed by Fareeha.

"What's wrong with it?" This was Fareeha.

"Everything forms wrong. I cannot seem to get it to work the way I want to."

Sombra watched Fareeha kneel by the project, look at it for a while and stand up again. "I don't understand your system. Could you show me what the problem is?"

Satya sighed, connecting the pieces with well practised ease. She switched it on, pointing at it irritably. "This is the... problem...?"

Fareeha chuckled. "Okay, so what's not working the way you want it to?"

Satya looked mildly distressed. "Nothing. It seems to be working as intended now... what has changed? Perhaps I assembled it differently before..." She sat back on her haunches for a second before turning back. "I am sorry for wasting your time Fareeha. If you wish I can look at the fuel mix ratios in the Raptora as promised anyway."

Fareeha shook her head. "Don't worry about it. I can ask Torbjörn. I know you don't like the engineering bay too much. If it starts playing up again, find Hana and ask her to come get me. I don't mind."

Satya nodded, engrossed in her work again. As Fareeha scanned her keycard to leave, Sombra took her chance to run out. She might be invisible, but she couldn't walk through walls. Fareeha's hair ruffled in the breeze caused by the invisible woman's departure and she paused.

"Satya," she called. "You might want to look into your air-con in here as well. Bit of a draft as you open the door." Satya nodded, engrossed in her work, and Fareeha took her leave.

It did not occur to Satya until much later that she had recalibrated the system just that morning to avoid interference in her testing.

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic in about four years, so I'm really excited to share it.


End file.
